Everyone in here so we can straighten out the Seagate problem...

[Stiletto]

Here's what I propose:

State how many Seagate 500GB, 1TB, or 1.5TB drives you have purchased, and how many of them have either gone bad or are running fine.

ALSO state where you ordered them from, and if you can remember, how they were packaged.

It seems to me that a lot of the complaints are coming from people who ordered their drives from Newegg, whom I and many others have found to be seriously lacking in their packaging care. I'd like to see if we can draw a reasonable distinction between whether this is an issue with Seagate, or from Newegg.

To start with, I'll note:

I ordered 1 7200.10 500GB drive from Newegg. It is dying after about a year and a half. It was wrapped in brown paper and thrown in a box.

I ordered 2 7200.11 500GB drives from ZipZoomfly. They are both working perfectly. They were in hard plastic shells which were wrapped in bubble wrap and placed snugly in a box.

For ease, I'll also include a poll.

 

[firebane]

Why newegg?

I have a 500gb that is affected purchased from NCIX retail store in September 08 and is still running fine.

Came in OEM static bag.

 

[animosity]

http://seagate.custkb.com/seagate/crm/selfservice/search.jsp?DocId=207931

There's a major problem with the firmware of those drives. Check to see if yours are affected, if so update or RMA.

http://www.techreport.com/discussions.x/16246

Looks like they are also offering free data recovery.

 

[jordan12]

Oh i think we know it is an issue with Seagate.....I know there have been issues with Newegg packaging, but in this case, seagate is to blame..

 

[pirate252]

Why newegg?

I have a 500gb that is affected purchased from NCIX retail store in September 08 and is still running fine.

Came in OEM static bag.

I think he stated Newegg specifically since in the other thread about this the issue of Newegg's sub standard packaging of hard drives was talked about a lot

 

[pirate252]

I ordered 3 7200.11 1TB drives from Newegg in Dec 08

#1 was DOA
2 were clicking (sounded like the heads were locking/unlocking every 1-5 min)
- #2 died in about 30 hrs of use
- #3 continued to click, never actually failed before I sent them all back, im sure it was on its way out though.

Came in individual antistatic bags, wrapped up in bubble wrap and packed decently with packing peanuts.

*On a side note when I ordered the replacements for them (2x velociraptors, 3x WD 1TB Blacks) those came wrapped in individual antistatic bags and packed in a big dense peice of foam with individual slots, appeared to be a piece of the big foam thing they must arrive to Newegg in, wonder if you can special request they package them like this, looks like its a much less damage prone way to package.

 

[Daynja]

Four 1.5's from newegg. They were packaged fine, just the way I've always received them before. Multiple layers of bubble wrap with packing peanuts inside the box. I updated the firmware. They have been working fine for about a month.

 

[SmokeRngs]

I ordered 2 7200.11 500 gig drives. One of them died with mechanical failure a few months after receiving it. The second one has had problems with being detected by the BIOS since I got it. It's actually still running at the moment but will probably be RMA'd after I get my other 500 gig back. It's also starting to die from mechanical failure as the motor makes some horrible screeching noises when it first spins up but had no trouble after that. No, there is no critical data on the drive that isn't backed up so if it dies before I get everything copied over I'm not in any trouble.

I did get them both from newegg but they were packed just fine. I don't think there will be any validity to the results of the poll regarding where people got their drives mostly because more people get their drives from newegg around here than anywhere else. No matter what, the results are going to show a lot of problems with newegg drives.

 

[Trepidati0n]

I ordered 2x1.5TBs from newegg when they had that massive paypal rebate. They had the "bad" firmware CC1G and I updated to CC1H. Since then they have been running for about a week w/ no issues. They are both about 20% full already.

 

[Syntax Error]

I know this statistic is hardly representative, but with all the FUD spread around by certain people on these forums about Seagate 7200.11 drives and their failures, are we really surprised by the poll results so far showing a vast majority have no issues?

 

[black lightning]

I have 4 of the 1.5TB ones from newegg that I purchased around new years day. None of them have had any issues at all and have come with good firmwares. I am going to order another 2 of these soon for my raid 6 array.

 

[Ockie]

36 1tb's here, about 10 500's, 0 1.5's (but have a few coworkers who have arrays with them).

0 failures... knock on wood. Quite a few of them has past the year mark, some even 2-3.

 

[arnemetis]

I ordered 5 1TB 7200.11 drives from zipzoomfly around October of last year, and they are working fine in my raid array. They were packaged in a pink foam shell that had slots designed for hard drives, and was put in a box surrounded by peanuts. I will check what firmware they have when I get home and update my post.

*edit* Well my drives are SD15, which is apparently one of the affected ones, blast They seem to be working though, maybe I won't try to fix what ain't broke...

 

[alamone]

I purchased 7 7200.11 1TB with SX15 firmware from Fry's B&M - no failures so far.
SX15 seems to be a slightly uncommon firmware revision.
The label on the drive actually says SD15, but it's reported as SX15 by bios/raid card.

I purchased 6 7200.11 1.5TB with SD17 or SD19 firmware half from Microcenter B&M half from amazon.com - and they all got updated to SD1A - one of the 3 from microcenter got the click of death and was kicked out by my Areca card - was replaced and has been working fine since.

B&Ms are all retail boxes obviously - amazon boxed each drive in a separate foam-box, and then boxed the whole thing. Very good.

To summarize, all my 7200.11 drives have not failed yet since I got them; but I've had several 7200.10 drives fail, and some of them fail in a manner that sounds very similar to the problem they've described for the 7200.11 - after a period of no power, they simply refuse to spin-up at boot.

 

[drew630]

I have two internal Seagate drives. One is a 1tb that is a month old from Newegg. The other is a 750gb that is over a year old from Newegg. Both drives are still working correctly and I have had zero issues with either drive.

Also, I have an external 80gb Seagate drive from Walmart that is over 4 years old and is still working correctly and have had zero issues with.

 

[pirate252]

How is there still only two marks in the 'i bought from newegg and they died'? Apparently we need to recruit some more people from my other thread there was sure more than 2 people in there that experienced failure. I have seen numbers on these drives as high as 30-40% failure rate (who knows how reliable that is since I dont remember where I saw it but thats still extreme)

 

[Mav451]

I purchased 7 7200.11 1TB with SX15 firmware from Fry's B&M - no failures so far.
SX15 seems to be a slightly uncommon firmware revision.
The label on the drive actually says SD15, but it's reported as SX15 by bios/raid card.

Agreed it's extremely rare. I've only seen it mentioned a couple times, both negative (of course ).

One, AVS - it dropped out of his array, so he got it replaced...
Two, Seagate forum thread, where guy has one working SX15, one non-working SX15. That thread is the one that startled me.

I bought mine B&M from Microcenter, retail box. P/N did not not match when I input the serial online for warranty check (last 3 numbers were different)...but I wonder if it's because retail stock moves so slowly?

 

[Kaizer]

I purchased 2 ST31000333AS 7200.11 1TB drives from Best Buy. One Ive been using internally, and one I put in an external enclosure. Both work fine it seems for now. Looking forward to the firmware update. Hope I can update the firmware over the USB connection for the external drive. Im too lazy to put it in the machine. The detect tool dected the one I had on the motherboard, but ignored the USB connected drive.

They came in the standard retail yellow box. Black plastic shell halves holding the drive in a static bag.

Im not at home atm but I believe drive said something about SV35 Could be wrong.

 

[Martel-fs]

some of them fail in a manner that sounds very similar to the problem they've described for the 7200.11 - after a period of no power, they simply refuse to spin-up at boot.

That's not what happens with the 7200.11... They eventually show up in the BIOS as having 0 LBA and/or never go un-busy.

For my poll answer, I haven't purchased any of these drives, but I have performed recovery on LOTS of them with this problem.

 

[oplin]

I've ordered

5 7200.10 500 gig drives from Newegg packaging was freakin horrible, have ordered probably 10-12 times from newegg and the packaging all sucked, i had one DOA drive was wd raptor.

5 7200.10 500 gig drives from CDW packaging was freaking awesome, best i have seen. I have a account rep there that usually will match neweggs prices so that's mainly where i get harddrives from now.

 

[Dangman]

From what I can gather from my records:
- Bought one 7200.8 300GB from Newegg in April of 2006. Started to click after a month usage but chalked this up as a result of attaching it to an Apevia PSU. RMA'd and the replacement 7200.8 400GB drive still works fine
- Bought one 7200.9 160GB drive from Newegg in January of 2007. Still works fine
- Bought one 7200.10 320GB drive from Newegg in December of 2007. Still works fine
- Bought one 7200.10 500GB PATA drive from Fry's in March of 2008. Loud scratching and clicking sounds due to the fact that I accidentally dropped it. RMA'd and the replacement is still working in a file server
- Bought one 7200.11 1TB from Best Buy back in April of 2008. Still works fine
- Bought one 7200.10 750GB from Fry's in May of 2008. Still works fine
- Bought one 7200.11 1.5TB from Newegg in November of 2008. Firmware SD19 IIRC. Still works fine.

Might as well include Maxtor since some of their drives are based on Seagate designs:
- Bought one Maxtor 320GB (exactly the same as the 7200.10 320GB) from Fry's in December 2007. Still works fine
- Bought one Maxtor external 750GB drive from Fry's in May of 2008. Still works fine.

 

[sneakygreenalien]

Purchased 1 seagate barracuda 7200.11 ST31000340AS 1tb 7200 with SD15 BIOS from newegg. The packaging was good.

I get clicking sounds and HD restarts due to 'delayed write failure'. Was able to replicate 'delayed write failure' on two different machines. Laptop with USB external solution and desktop via sata2.

I have the BIOS update but I'm afraid of losing all my precious data if I flash.

Anyone here flash the BIOS without data loss?

I also own a seagate 500(ata) and 160(2.5") both working fine.

 

[Rampage9]

Purchased 2x Seagate 7200.11 500gb 32mb Cache drives from directcanada.com in July 2008
Both firmware SD15

One was showing signs of failing (data corruption, write fails, failed SeaTools Tests) - RMA'd in late December 2008 with another SD15

The second drive has been OK so far... knock on wood...

 

[MrMitch]

just 1 1.5tb drive for me. came SD17, flashed to SD1A, then it died.

bought from dell.com and came in a real nice oem box.

 

[drgnfang]

2x 500 7200.10 (2007-07-02, Newegg) zero problems
2x 250 7200.10 (2008-02-08, Newegg) zero problems
2x 750 7200.10 (2008-09-02, Newegg) 1 RMA due to hardware defect (SATA plug installed bad)
1x 80 7200.10 (2008-09-20, Newegg) zero problems
3x 500 7200.12 (2009-01-18, Newegg) due tomorrow, will know soon.


Note: I've also ordered 10+ WD drives from Newegg with zero dead drives (I need to quit saying that out loud, gonna bite me at some point)

 

[SC385]

2x 1.5TB drives firmware SD17 updated to SD1A. No problems here.

 

[Daynja]

How is there still only two marks in the 'i bought from newegg and they died'? Apparently we need to recruit some more people from my other thread there was sure more than 2 people in there that experienced failure. I have seen numbers on these drives as high as 30-40% failure rate (who knows how reliable that is since I dont remember where I saw it but thats still extreme)

lol that's what good scientists do. If you don't like the results of a poll, make sure to start asking people that will vote the way you want them to!

 

[/dev/null]

I have 4 1TB from CDW, bought in sept, working, no hitches, nothing.
I have 8 1.5TB bought in 2 batches from ebay. 1 had bad blocks (linux badblocks confirmed), but wans't packaged well. I returned it & seagate gave me a new one.

my 1T's are waiting for a hotswap cage, and my 8 1.5's are on a lsi logic 8 port pci-x sata controller in JBOD.

They are running on ZFS under freebsd. Due to how zfs works, I'd have a lot more chance seeing errors than you guys running NTFS, and zfs hasn't reported any problems (yet).

 

[big mike]

I've got a 7200.10 500 from the egg which is fine and a 7200.11 1tb that was an RMA "free upgrade" to a 7200.11 500 that is also fine so far. The 7200.11 is SD15 firmware too, dunno what the 500 is off hand.

 

[Rebel44]

1x 7200.10 320GB
1x 7200.12 500GB
1x 7200.11 1.5TB
4 other low capacity Seagate HDDs

I dont have any problem with them.

 

[hmz]

320GB from newegg worked for about more than a year, then started to give SMART errors. Seagate replaced with a refurbished one. Still works.
7200.10 500GB from ZZF bought in Sep. 2007. Works fine.

 

[DeChache]

2 Seagate 7200.10s from BB 1 runs fine the other will randomly corrupt all its data every couple months.

Seagate 7200.3 320 2.5in. from BB Louds hot and unreliable. Returned for a WD drive

At work I've had 3 160gig 7200.7 Fail Gateway OEM(Came in systems) and a 7200.10 500 gig in a new Dell.

 

[Digital Viper-X-]

I've never really had drives fail, I keep them cool and free of any shock until my 7200.11s :/ this is the second one to go in 6 months! damnit both 1TB

 

[jtg1993]

A Seagate Barracuda .11 1TB is my 2nd good hard drive to die besides years ago dealing with ~4GB hard drives. It now has 12 reallocated sectors and I bought it locally at a computer store. For those who are wondering what my other drive that died, it was a Samsung 60GB laptop hard drive that died because I threw my laptop because my bro was pissing me off.

 

[Farva]

8x320GB 7200.10, working fine for over 2 years in R5.

 

[Phimp]

I've also ordered 10+ WD drives from Newegg with zero dead drives (I need to quit saying that out loud, gonna bite me at some point)

I'm with you. I've purchased over ten drives (I think all WD drives) from NewEgg over the past couple years, and I have never had a hard drive failure.

I've also ordered ~$3500 worth of parts from NewEgg over the past few years and I've never once received a DOA item.

I honestly have never noticed a problem with NewEgg's packaging with hard drives. When I order two or more, they usually come in a stiff foam separator.. if I order a single drive, it comes in some sort of cardboard/plastic/foam shell that doesn't let it move, OR it's wrapped in big bubble wrap with like 4 1" layers thick, then it is somewhere inside the larger box of of parts I ordered surrounded with packing peanuts to the top of the box. Occasionally, there's a couple air bags in the mix of billions of packing peanuts. This seems like adequate packaging to me.


I think the whole NewEgg Packaging fiasco is fueled by the same way that Best Buy has a 1.5/10 rating on resellerratings.com.
Best Buy isn't that bad.. they have decent prices for an extremely popular brick and mortar store that is available almost everywhere you go. Their customer service & policies are pretty much the same as all other major chain stores... The reason they have a bad reputation online, is that if someone has a bad experience, they complain. If someone has a good experience, they are happy/content and they continue to purchase from them. They aren't as likely to create threads/polls and post about how horrible they are in a certain aspect.

That's just my 2 cents.

anyways, for the record I bought a few Seagate 750GB drives from a local B&M store about a year ago, and one died after a month. another seagate drive from newegg a year ago and it's still running strong.

 

[DeadSkull]

My only Seagate 1Tb ST31000340AS (SD 15 firmware) has failed/bricked two weeks ago. I thought it was due to overclocking but since how the drive completely vanished from My Comp or Storage I'm betting that it bricked itself after a restart.

Also have you guys seen this in the news?

No more seagates for me, I cant trust them to keep my Tb worth of movies, games and porn safe anymore.

 

[[LYL]Homer]

"Seagate offers free data recovery for faulty drives
Data recovery firms believe 30% of Barracuda drives are failing"
http://www.computerworld.com/action...articleId=9126360&taxonomyId=19&intsrc=kc_top

 

[Vito_Corleone]

5x1.5TB from Newegg. One failed.

 

[dandragonrage]

We don't have enough people to answer this poll for it to have anywhere near statistical meaning.

I don't like Seagate, but do not draw any conclusions from it. (I didn't vote, of course)